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The Rework Podcast

Rapid Fire Questions with Jason and David

21 min episode · 2 min read
·

Episode

21 min

Read time

2 min

Topics

Startups, Leadership, Software Development

AI-Generated Summary

Key Takeaways

  • Writing as leverage: Founders underestimate writing as the most scalable influence tool compared to in-person rallying or video. Written ideas and vision travel farther than any other medium, making it more valuable than becoming a media personality.
  • Gut-driven decisions: Founders waste time seeking certainty through endless feedback loops. Trust educated guesses over consensus-building. Business rarely offers obvious right answers, so develop comfort making decisions without complete information and testing outcomes in real time.
  • Growth pressure origins: Attempts to scale bigger often stem from ego, insecurity, or proving capability to others rather than genuine business needs. Boredom after twenty years can drive experimentation, but work required for growth may not align with work founders actually want to do.
  • Testing convictions: Periodically try the opposite of long-held beliefs to validate whether they remain valid. 37signals tested engineering managers and growth targets after decades of opposition, ultimately confirming original approach but gaining valuable perspective through experimentation.

What It Covers

Jason Fried and David Heinemeier Hansson answer rapid-fire questions about essential software tools, underrated founder skills, mind changes about company growth, ignored customer requests, and upcoming products including Fizzy and major Basecamp updates.

Key Questions Answered

  • Writing as leverage: Founders underestimate writing as the most scalable influence tool compared to in-person rallying or video. Written ideas and vision travel farther than any other medium, making it more valuable than becoming a media personality.
  • Gut-driven decisions: Founders waste time seeking certainty through endless feedback loops. Trust educated guesses over consensus-building. Business rarely offers obvious right answers, so develop comfort making decisions without complete information and testing outcomes in real time.
  • Growth pressure origins: Attempts to scale bigger often stem from ego, insecurity, or proving capability to others rather than genuine business needs. Boredom after twenty years can drive experimentation, but work required for growth may not align with work founders actually want to do.
  • Testing convictions: Periodically try the opposite of long-held beliefs to validate whether they remain valid. 37signals tested engineering managers and growth targets after decades of opposition, ultimately confirming original approach but gaining valuable perspective through experimentation.

Notable Moment

David explains how switching from Mac to Linux forced him to discover Obsidian, revealing he was completely oblivious to superior note-taking options because Apple Notes kept him out of the market for alternatives for years.

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Episode Transcript

Welcome to Rework, a podcast by thirty seven Signals about the better way to work and run your business. I'm Kimberly Rhodes from the thirty seven Signals team joined by the cofounders Jason Fried and David Heinemeier Hanssen. It's been a while since we've been with you. But this week, we're gonna do some rapid fire questions. Just some fun things for the guys to answer. I did this couple years ago and thought I'd bring it back. So, let's start with this one. What's a piece of software or an app that you can't live without and it can't be one of your own? Who wants to take that one first? I can't live without. I'll just tell you something I like a lot. I mean, I could live without anything, really, to be honest. There's a great piece of, screencast recording software called Screen Studio, which I've been using a lot. And I've used a bunch of things over the years, and I've never been satisfied with any of them. Either they're they're too sophisticated, they require too much editing, there's, like, too much stuff to set up, or they're too simplistic and you can't quite get it the way you want it. Screen Studio is an incredibly well built screencast tool that just sort of does everything you want it to do, stays out of the way, gives you the power if you want it, but it doesn't put it in your face. You have to kind of get the power, which is nice. And, it records, you know, your your camera's in the corner. You can change the corners, but it just everything's dialed in really nicely. And so I wanna just give shout out to, I forget the guy's name who makes it, but it's one of these one man shop kind of products, I believe, and those are always the best. These, like, enthusiasts who just make something that they want themselves. It's so obvious when someone wants something for themselves and they make it, and that's what this product is. So, shout out to Screen Studio. It's at screen.studio. I think no. .Com. Just screens.studio. I don't know if it still is, but it used to be, like, just a one time pay fee. Like, pay once and done. I don't know if that's still the case. When I bought it, it was, and I was like, what a deal. Yeah. I don't remember. But, great product. Really, really good. Cool. David, what about you? I'm gonna go with Obsidian. So Obsidian is a note taking app. It's a native application that's available on Linux and all the platforms. And the reason I like it so much is partly because I didn't even consider note taking as an application category until I moved off all my Apple gear because I've just been using Apple Notes since forever. And it's really interesting. When you're not in the market for something, you're oblivious to all …

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Books, tools, and gear mentioned in this episode

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Tools

  • ObsidianRecommended
    David explains how switching from Mac to Linux forced him to discover Obsidian, revealing he was completely oblivious to superior note-taking options because Apple Notes kept him out of the market for alternatives for years.
  • David explains how switching from Mac to Linux forced him to discover Obsidian, revealing he was completely oblivious to superior note-taking options because Apple Notes kept him out of the market for alternatives for years.

Products

  • Jason Fried and David Heinemeier Hansson answer rapid-fire questions about essential software tools, underrated founder skills, mind changes about company growth, ignored customer requests, and upcoming products including Fizzy and major Basecamp updates.
  • Jason Fried and David Heinemeier Hansson answer rapid-fire questions about essential software tools, underrated founder skills, mind changes about company growth, ignored customer requests, and upcoming products including Fizzy and major Basecamp updates.

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